OK. I'm not real big on Physics, but I know that there are others in here that are a bit more physics oriented than I am.

Picture for a moment two cars stopped at a traffic light. Red car and blue car. Excuse the rough drawing below. It's just for illustration purposes only.



Enter into the picture gray car lets say traveling at 25 MPH. Gray car doesn't see that traffic is stopped, and slams into blue car, which in turn hits red car. Would there be a pronounced whiplash effect on red car over blue car?

A little history on this is my wife driving the red car, was hit waiting at a red light in the rear by the blue car because he was hit by the gray car. The gray car was deemed responsible for the accident and has to pay costs pertaining to the repairs and hospitalization of my wife for whiplash. (Not to mention the blue car who was really caught in between.) Am I making any sense?

Weeks went by and my wife went back to the doc because of continued and unrelenting pain, and they finally ordered an MRI of my wife's neck and they've found 3 herniated discs in my wife's neck. She's in a great deal of pain. Now the doctor has to make a determination of whether the accident caused this, or if it was something that happened earlier. Now we know that she wasn't having a problem before the accident. But proving it is a completely different story.

I'm theorizing that there would be an increased whiplash effect over the "slingshot" effect. But does my theory hold water? Of course any of your statements aren't really legally binding, but I'm trying to look at all the possibilities that are available to me.

** BTW.... I'm going to be posting at several forums trying to get the broadest range of answers. So you don't need to answer twice if you've seen it before. **

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The blue car would be worse off as some energy would be dissapated before hitting the red car. Depending on how close to the red one as how equal they would be. Also the blue one might get it both ways from getting hit and then hitting the red car.

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Doesn't expecting the unexpected make the unexpected the expected?
If it makes sense, DON'T do it.

The blue car would be worse off as some energy would be dissapated before hitting the red car. Depending on how close to the red one as how equal they would be. Also the blue one might get it both ways from getting hit and then hitting the red car.

I've come to that conclusion myself over several other people answering the question I've posed here. I've figured that if there was 20 cars in line, and the red car was in front, it would be nearly impossible for the red car to get much more than a love-tap.

My theory is flawed! There goes my Nobel!

Thanks for your thoughts BW!

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In reality it doesn't matter that most of the enery would be disapated by the blue car. Whiplash and other muscoskeletal pains can purely depend on how the person was sitting at the time. If you get hit from behind the sudden jolt and compression of the neck as the head stays still and the body moves forward can cause major problems. Now if the head was resting against the head rest at the time, the amount of damage could be significantly reduced - but who drives with their head leaning back against the rest.

More modern cars or safety concious manufacturers have head rests that lean slightly forward to help intercept/restrict the head movement in these scenarios. For racing car drivers they go a step further and have relatively recently introduced the HANS (Head and Neck Support) device to help avoid these sort of injuries to drivers in the likely case of incidents. This as well as many other improvements have significantly reduced the number of injuries drivers experience.

More modern cars or safety concious manufacturers have head rests that lean slightly forward to help intercept/restrict the head movement in these scenarios. For racing car drivers they go a step further and have relatively recently introduced the HANS (Head and Neck Support) device to help avoid these sort of injuries to drivers in the likely case of incidents. This as well as many other improvements have significantly reduced the number of injuries drivers experience.

The red car that my wife was driving was an older, but high performance car. It was a 1999 Pontiac Grand Am GT. I theorize, (there I go theorizing again ) that being a high performance car, it might be a little more safety conscience than say a lower performance car of the same year. Here's a stock picture of the old girl who a junk yard owns now. (Not necessarily our old car.) RIP....

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She is lucky not to be paralyzed.
Herniated discs in the neck after an injury (whiplash)
will be as a result of the injury, unless she's had a similar
accident previously.
The grey car was going faster than 25mph though. Modern cars have
crimpling (?) zones that absorb a lot of the energy of accidents.

She is lucky not to be paralyzed.

That, my friend is a scary thought. But I believe that would be an extreme possibility though.

The grey car was going faster than 25mph though. Modern cars have crimpling (?) zones that absorb a lot of the energy of accidents.

I believe that too, considering the amount of damage to the rear of her car. But there were no witnesses that came forth to make that point to my knowledge. I firmly believe the guy isn't going to add speeding to his charge by admitting that he was doing faster than the speed limit. They totaled my wife's car, and in that way avoided paying over $5000 to fix it. All they gave us was $3200 for it. We were pretty much screwed.

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Not so extreme. With disk herniation it is the nucleus of the disk
that herniates (see it as a poached egg and the yolk protruding).
It protrudes backward, presses on the spinal cord and ...whammy!
I would press this and get expert opinion, i.e. a neurosurgeon.
Whiplash injuries often have life-long side effects. I think his
insurance is laughing...

Yes. We've got a neurosurgeon on it as we speak. She sees him again on (I think) 8/24. I'll be able to hear what he has to say about this situation then. She did say that he'd consider steroid injections in her neck and physical therapy first, but he seems to feel that surgery is the best option. Only time will tell.

She hates the idea of surgery. In fact she detests it, but I think if the injections and therapy fail, she'll come around. But I do doubt that the insurance is laughing too hard. What with damages to 3 vehicles, and that's not even knowing the physical damage to any of three involved vehicles drivers themselves.

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Yes. We've got a neurosurgeon on it as we speak. She sees him again on (I think) 8/24. I'll be able to hear what he has to say about this situation then. She did say that he'd consider steroid injections in her neck and physical therapy first, but he seems to feel that surgery is the best option. Only time will tell.

She hates the idea of surgery. In fact she detests it, but I think if the injections and therapy fail, she'll come around. But I do doubt that the insurance is laughing too hard. What with damages to 3 vehicles, and that's not even knowing the physical damage to any of three involved vehicles drivers themselves.

Dune, 8/24? Do you mean in 10 days?
Anyway ... . I just read this thread today. I was struck by a drunk driver (from behind) in summer '94 when returning from an interview. Something's also seemed a little off since then ... headaches, needing to hold my head at a weird angle, etc ..., since then. I was in too much shock to determine whether I needed to go to a hospital. They didn't make me go. They asked if I wanted to. I was so out of it, I said no.

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Dune, 8/24? Do you mean in 10 days?

Yup. She went to him once to tell them about her aches and pains, then she went again and he wanted the MRI. She talked to him briefly afterward and that's when he told her about the herniated disks.

She was in shock after the accident too, and turned down going to the hospital for a checkout. But the cop told us that we had 24 hours (or maybe that was 48 hours dunno....) Anyway when she woke up the next morning she had bad pain between the shoulder blades. We made her a quick appointment to see our family doctor.

One thing led to another, now here we are... happy campers.

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